Sierra Thoreson

Sierra Thoreson

From as early as I can remember I was up early on Sunday mornings, rushing through breakfast, and running to the car to travel across the Bay Bridge from Oakland to San Francisco, California in our humble weekly attempts to arrive at church on time. While those attempts often failed, the community surrounding my non-denominational, primarily African-American church community developed me for years around scripture, worship, family and service.

As the years passed I was forced to consider how a life of following Jesus would look different from a life of mere regular church attendance. From those early and recurring moments of surrendering my life whole-heartedly to Jesus, he has taken me on a complex and beautiful adventure of following Him that I couldn’t have written better myself.

When I graduated high school, I left my urban-diverse-sunny hometown of Oakland, California and flew across the country, landing in the rural-mountainous-often snowy land of Williamstown, Massachusetts to attend Williams College. As a student, I got connected with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and received some of the most profound discipleship training, life changing scripture study, and long-lasting friendships. I graduated Williams College with two degrees: my B.A. in History and Psychology, and what I like to call my “Mrs.” as I married my college best friend Luke Thoreson, just months after graduating. Today we live, work, and attend a local church in the Cambridge area.

As a chaplain at Harvard with the undergraduate ministry of InterVarsity my hope is to help students connect with Jesus. I love to engage with students’ deep questions about Jesus and the Christian worldview. So, whether you are deeply skeptical about who Jesus is, you are searching for purpose and meaning in life, or if you just want to know what Christians truly believe, I invite you to begin the journey of exploring Jesus with me. And if you are a follower of Jesus already, let’s learn what it means to surrender our whole lives to Him, as we follow Him to every corner of the campus!